Jazz at the Lobero, Heard Around the World

By Josef Woodard Fri Jan 03, 2025 | 10:00am

Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer, flautist Rakesh Chaurasia, and Zakir Hussain performing at UCSB Campbell Hall on November 15, 2023 | Photo: David Bazemore

Life has an ending, at least on the mortal plane. But sometimes, the passing of certain life force–endowed people comes as a surprise, as was the case with expansive-thinking table master Zakir Hussain, who recently died at the age of 73 of a rare disease. His natural essence was as a seemingly ever-young-ish, affirmative spirit–channeler with renewable energy powers. It’s hard to wrap one’s head around his being absent from the known world and the world’s (and Santa Barbara’s) stages.

Though based in Marin County for decades, Hussain was very much a world citizen on many levels. He toured the globe and forged his own unique pathways through musical genres from the East and West. He maintained his core linkage to his Hindustani roots, performing with Ravi Shankar and many other Indian classical masters, while fearlessly branching out into such famed hybrid projects as the landmark John McLaughlin–led Shakti (which embarked on a 50th anniversary tour two years back), the poetic power trio Sangam (led by Santa Barbara’s own Charles Lloyd), and as the Indian flavoring and wisdom in Mickey Hart’s Planet Drum medicine show. He also built up a vast trove of recordings, from Indian classical and fusion-ized sources, on his own Moment! Label.

Thankfully, Santa Barbara was blessed by his sublime musical presence on many — and many different — occasions over the years, up through a tantalizing East-West meeting of musical forces at Campbell Hall in 2023. There, playing music from their aptly named album As We Speak, Hussain conversed easily and with humor-sprinkled virtuosity with Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer, and flautist Rakesh Chaurasia. Earlier 805 encounters included Hindustani concerts with Ravi Shankar at the Arlington and, probably most notably, the night of Sangam’s birth at the Lobero.

Zakir Hussain performing with Shivkumar Sharma at UCSB Campbell Hall on April 9, 2009 | Photo: David Bazemore

That special trio formation, featuring the twin percussive voices of Hussain and Lloyd’s regular drummer Eric Harland, put on a fascinating and deep-diving concert in 2005, captured by Dom Camardella of Sound Design, for release on the eminent ECM label. The album Sangam thus became one of the most significant albums ever recorded in Santa Barbara (for the record, Horace Tapscott also recorded live albums at the Lobero on the Nimbus label and Kavi Alexander’s Water Lily Acoustics label produced a high volume of intriguing albums at King’s Chapel).

As Hussain explained in an interview I did with him for a Lloyd cover story for DownBeat, “It’s totally unrehearsed. It was just `Let’s get on stage and let’s do something.’ I called Charles beforehand and said `Master, what pitches of tabla should I be bringing, so it works with the keys you’re working in.’ And he said, `Just tune to the key of the universe.’ It’s so typical (laughs). So that’s basically what the show was. I came in with some tuned pitches, and he adapted to those. We set up some pieces. It all just happened. That was the first time we played together.”

Sangam featuring Zakir Hussain, Charles Lloyd, and Eric Harland at the Lobero Theatre, March 9, 2005 | Photo: David Bazemore

“It’s great to work with the master, because he allows us room to be kids and have fun. There’s none of this `Watch me and do what I ask’ kind of thing. It’s more like `Ok, here it is. Fill in the blanks.’ It’s a lot of fun to be allowed to have such confidence coming from such a great man. Charles is so supportive, backing us up to do what we like doing onstage.”

While some might still view the synthesis of jazz and Indian music as an experimental and fringe dwelling business, in the right circumstances, it actually makes a natural connection. As Hussain explained, the merger is “a very natural connection. I guess people like to have some kind of a label to put on it, but it had to happen. There was no way to keep them apart. They are twins. It had to be. It’s a process that works the same way in India as it does here, and there was no reason why it couldn’t come together. Coltrane got into it. So many other great musicians did, as well, especially someone like John McLaughlin.

“Everybody understands that there is a common ground here which has always existed. I don’t know how that happened. Maybe it’s the African connection from the old times, that both India and America have prospered from.”

Zakir Hussain performing with Sangam at the Lobero Theatre, March 9, 2005 | Photo: David Bazemore

Although steeped in Indian classical training and tradition, the son of tabla legend Alla Rakha, Hussain headed west and quickly plunged into a broadening horizon of influences and new musical ideas. Arriving at the University of Washington in 1970, he was surprised and delighted to find Indian music — as well as Middle Eastern, Chinese, and African music — being taught there.

“It was fortunate for me to arrive in that atmosphere,” he said, “and to then sit in and learn, and share what I had. I was young enough to be able to learn and be flexible. If I had been ten years older, I probably would have been too rigid and too deeply entrenched in my tradition to actually accept anything else. I was just the right age, at 17 or 18. I was ready.

“Elvis was just about all we knew. I couldn’t really understand what he was saying [imitates his drawl]. Actually, I used to think, in those days, that there was a different language called American, with John Wayne talking and ‘kimo sabe’ and all that stuff. It was that kind of mind I brought to America. When it became available, I gobbled it up.”

So it was never your intention to just strictly follow the classical path?

“It has always been my intention to be connected with my roots and tradition and to follow the classical path, but it is also my intention to learn more and find out what exists in the world. It’s not solely to just play all these other things myself, but to understand enough of that to communicate what I do. For that reason, it’s important.”

In a 1997 interview I did for the Los Angeles Times, Hussain reflected on his own generational continuum and hopes for the future.

Zakir Hussain at UCSB’s Kerr Hall | Photo: David Bazemore

“I watch my dad, and he’s 78. He has been playing for 63 years now. He gets on the stage, and his face lights up. It’s like `Ok, let’s go.’ And I’ve always wondered if I would have the same zest or passion or love for what I do, drumming-wise, when I get on the stage after playing for 60 years. I hope that I do. I think I feel the same way that he does now when he gets onstage. It’s fantastic to be up there.

“It’s partly that we’re hams. [We] have this tremendous ego that needs rubbing every now and then. It’s partly that, but also this unabashed, pure love for what we do, which transcends all the material things like business and fees and royalties. All of that doesn’t matter when you’re on stage and playing.”

Hussain didn’t reach his father’s finishing line age of 80 but has left a massive archive of recordings worth revisiting and memories to cherish, including memories planted in our town.

Selective Zakir Hussain listening links:

            Making Music (with John McLaughlin) (ECM, 1987) link
            Charles Lloyd, Sangam (ECM, 2006) link
            Good Hope, Hussain, Chris Potter, and Dave Holland (Edition, 2019) link
            Shakti, This Moment (Abstract Logic, 2023) link
            Tribute to Ustad Zakir Hussain (Saragama India Ltd., 2024) link

Jazz at the Lobero, Continuing

Speaking of jazz landings in the supremely jazz-friendly ambience of the Lobero, things are looking up as we head into the winter/spring. Viewed historically, Lobero’s connection with world class jazz is the stuff of legend, with a long list of concerts including Pat Metheny, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Dave Brubeck (many times), Ahmad Jamal, Brad Mehldau, Bill Frisell, John Scofield, The Bad Plus, Dianne Reeves, Jack DeJohnette, Tierney Sutton, and many a show by local hero Charles Lloyd. If recent years, in and around the pandemic, have found serious jazz nudged aside in Lobero’s programming plan, the near future looks bright again.

The current “Jazz at the Lobero” roster would have started with a bold bang with Robert Hurst, originally slated for this Sunday, but that show has (wisely, given the lean calendar moment) been postponed to a later date (TBA). But the local jazz fandom’s presence is encouraged at Delfeayo Marsalis (March 7), Charles Lloyd Delta Trio (with pianist Jason Moran and guitarist Marvin Sewell) on March 14, and from the jazz tilting into pop and back corner, Michael Feinstein’s Tony Bennett Tribute (March 22). And keep on the lookout for a chance to catch the new-ish jazz hipster Hurst on the Lobero marquee.